Where Once Stood Arlathan
by Tabitha of MoonAurora
Summary: Warning: Major character death. The Fade would sing of this moment into the millennia to come. The moment the Dread Wolf was struck down. How it was not blade, nor magic that took him, but the will of his love.


Inspired by Nipuni's "Last Stand" as well as Enya Lavellan, the young dalish hunter who grew beyond her youthful, sheltered ways to the leader the Inquisition and her People truly needed.

Where Once Stood Arlathan

There they stood, two elves, brimming with power, bloodied and battered from a siege that lasted far longer than it should. He was ancient, she could see it now, more so that she ever had written on the stormy ocean of his eyes. Her shoulders sagged. She stood, alone with him against him, in this room, the walls covered in precise paintings marred with the blood of her own people, his own people. A story they told, of a quest so long and so tortured that most of the parts had been forgotten by time. Even by the Fade.

She shuddered now as he moved, languid steps unsteady as he approached her. His staff hung at his side and it seemed he hovered on the edge, undecided. Never before had she seen him truly hesitate. An ache grew deep within her as she watched him fighting with himself and for a moment she dared to hope his hand would be stayed, that somehow, against all odds and against everything she knew of him, he would stop. A tear cut a track through the crust of red on her cheek, dripping onto the intricate lace of vines that adorned her armor.

They circled each other, two leaders, two alphas, two wolves at the head of their packs. Neither moved to fight: neither wanted this battle, yet it had to be. Here they stood at the precipice of fate, pillars of immense power and will waiting in the darkness for lightning to strike.

He would move first, she knew it. It was duty that drove him, and duty that drove her. For all the love she bore for him, for everything they had been through, for all the years she had spent raising the child they'd created, she could not allow this. No matter the agony that tore her very soul from her body already, she could not choose a love over the doom of all the world. She searched his face, the curve of his jaw, watched him swallow, noticed the quirk in the tightness of his eyebrows and the way they furrowed at the middle.

She was more than an exceptional mage now. He had millennia of practice, but she had millennia of combined knowledge within her and a year of fighting in his company. She still remembered the tingle of his barrier spell descending over her as they shoved their way through demons to close that first rift, long before she knew what any of this meant.

The anchor on her hand glimmered, shimmering in the light of the moon that shown through the open rotunda. Not a sound, not a breath of wind joined them.

He drew himself up suddenly, as though struck by a thought. His eyes downcast he waited. And when finally he did look up, meet her eyes, she was surprised to find tears in them.

"I am sorry, vhenan."

And like that, it was battle. She had been right, the first blow would be his, and the second, and the third. She let him wear on her defenses, slashing instead with her blade, but eventually, she cast it aside. Their magic met in fireworks, lighting the room, stinging and charing the walls until finally the explosions reach such a magnitude they shook the stones loose. Too focused, their will too strong, neither noticed as chunks of the rotunda's roof rained down on them, sliding harmlessly past their shields.

It was an endless drive, moment after moment of sound and light and clever magic wound with deadly intent and flung between lovers. The world or him, the world or him. On and on they went, magic piercing into the night, blossoming into flowers and branching into leaves. Vines of spirit magic wove about his legs and captured him. A cage of ice took her. A rift into the Fade opened and drew him forward. Blow after blow, power against power until naught was left but two trembling forms, one ancient, and one so very young. Both bore the weight of the world. And yet it was she who rose from her knees, she whose steps bore her forward, she who stumbled before him.

And like it had begun, she thrust out her marked hand, holding it out to caress his bloodied cheek. Exhaustion tore through her, and a deep abiding fury, for whatever universe it was that had given her this destiny. She knelt before him, running her thumb over his cheek bone, and with the mark that should have been his, she drew from him the magic, the power, the energy, releasing it all into the Fade through her mark. All the eras he had suffered, all the hurts he had ever caused or endured, everything drifted into nothing more than memory.

It could have been seconds, minutes, hours. She felt him falter, his body growing weak as immortality escaped him. She lifted him then, hefting his barely conscious form from the floor. Outside they went to the hill beyond the rotunda and there they settled. He would want to see the stars, feel the wind on his face, be wafted away on the gentle scent of honeysuckle in the world he had nearly destroyed. She would give him that.

Shuddering, she lowered him to the ground and watched his eyes flicker between open and closed. She knew. He blinked at her and drew a shaky breath.

"I should have known," He reached a hand up and pulled her blood-soaked hair free of it bun, "I awoke from Uthenera and there you were. A woman too great to be held by a title or by her past or even by a lover. Greater than any I have ever known."

She clasped her hand over his at her cheek, kissing his palm. He drew a breath and it shuddered in his throat. His already pale skin was nearly white and his next words were barely more than a whisper.

"Ma vhenan. Fen'asha Vhenan, (My heart. Lady of the Wolf's heart)."

His hand, clasped in hers grew limp. She choked back a sob.

"Ir abelas, ma lath, (I'm sorry, my love)" She cupped his cheek in her hand and leant over to press a kiss to his lips.

He clung to her for a moment, but when she drew away, she felt him shake.

"Thaman tel'lanaste, ma vhenan. (There is nothing to forgive, my heart,)"

He ran a hand through her hair again and she leaned forward, placing her head on his chest, "Ar lath ma, Solas."

"Var lath vir suledin, Enya," He pressed a kiss to her hair, but she rose and kissed him again.

She tasted the blood that splattered his face, the tears he'd cried, or perhaps that they'd both cried. Beneath it all there remained the hint of cocoa, bitter and sweet all at once, and the tears came anew. His hand fell from her hair and the breath he drew from her grew shallow, rough, and then all of a sudden very long. Low. Lasting an eternity. She ran her fingers through the wolf pelt draped over his shoulder and it knotted around them, clinging. He smiled at her then, soft and gentle, the warmest he could give, the kind she had often seen upon waking in the morning. It brimmed with love and devastating pain, one she'd never understood then, but now…

And then it was gone.

The Fade would sing of this moment into the millennia to come. The moment the Dread Wolf was struck down. How it was not blade, nor magic that took him, but the will of his love that laid him to rest on the high hills at the center of a forest where once sat Arlathan. The spirits would weep here for the woman who lay on the chest of the man she had slain, driven to despair by her grief in victory. For her there would come no satisfaction, only acceptance.

And in the years that came to pass she would tell her growing daughter of the man who had been her father and never go further in explaining his death than to say it was by her own hand. And of the elvhen, who had followed him, they found a new leader in the one who had slain their old, for in her they saw hope, they saw promise, they saw peace. Yet in the darkness of the night, she would walk alone, through dreams devoid of the silver wolf that had haunted them for so long. And down endless moonlit paths she strode, ever ending at that hill where the spirits wept and sang, where once stood Arlathan.


End file.
